China River Turns Red in a Span of 24 Hours

A river in China has turned red in a span of a mere 24 hours. It remains a mystery how such a clean river could turn so red in such a short period of time.

A river in the Zhejiang province of China has turned red overnight giving the inhabitants of the city quite a shock. Nobody has been able to understand why this quirky phenomenon took place in the first place. 

Such an incident has been hitherto unknown in Wenzhou and the red river could not have been subjected to industrial waste products in such a limited time span. 

It seems that some other factor is at play here. But what that is remains a mystery wrapped in an enigma. The locals used to fill their bottles with the water since it was absolutely pure. 

They even caught fish from the river which again is proof of its pristine nature since fish only breathe in contaminant-free water. 

It was on Thursday morning that the whole phenomenon transpired leaving the indigenous people flabbergasted at the radical change in color and constitution. 

“A few people that were up and about at 5am said that everything was normal but then suddenly within the space of a few minutes the water started turning darker and eventually was completely red,” Local resident Na Wan told the Express.

“The really weird thing is that we have always been able to catch fish and you can even drink the water because it’s just normally so good. Nobody has any idea how it could have ended up being polluted because there are no factories that dump anything in the water here.”

Picture: River turns ‘blood’ red overnight in Cangnan County, #Zhejiang. Cause unknown. #waterpollution pic.twitter.com/o92KbMe3Hs— CCTVNEWS (@cctvnews) July 25, 2014

The Environmental Protection Bureau took samples of the crimson colored water from the river and has begun tests to determine the exact chemical components it consists of. 

What the analysis will yield is anyone’s lucky guess. There have been previous cases though which lend a clue or two regarding the situation at hand. 

“We suspect that somebody dumped artificial coloring in the water because he thought the typhoon yesterday would cause heavy rain, and nobody would notice [the color],” Jianfeng Xiao, Chief of the bureau told China News. “It turned out there wasn’t heavy rainfall yesterday, so the evidence is left behind.”

A river in China turned blood red overnight and no one has any idea why http://t.co/wfXpfIexYx pic.twitter.com/yl9eC5BLC2— Barstool Sports (@barstoolsports) July 25, 2014

Two years ago, for example, the Yangtze River turned red. And the mishap was blamed on man-made pollutants that somehow got surreptitiously leaked into the river. 

Usually it is due to a large quantity of dye that gets released into the body of water. The suspected agency must have dumped all that dye into the river with the afterthought that the rainstorm that was due in the region would not let the color be evident. 

But the rainstorm never transpired and so the river showed clear signs of the color red. And it also gave off a particularly foul pong. A clothing company, a food color maker and a paper mill were the usual suspects since their premises were all lined up along the waterway.  

River in China mysteriously turns blood-red overnight http://t.co/3yhKQbTCj0 pic.twitter.com/gW6sBjZRNv— Asaad Hutchinson (@asaadhutchinson) July 25, 2014